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Spain betrayed my alliance, sieging two of my cities. One fell already, the second was in a bad way but I attacked the besiegers with 3 decent units to supplement the (mostly shitty mercenary) forces inside the city. To make the battle a bit trickier, behold how to get fucked over by the battle map:

My guys are the ones in the distance. Lots of walking around the map later (and getting the reinforcements from the city onto the field)

No need for tactics here, beyond some cavalry positioning

The head of a fifth Spanish family member was added to those shown just a second later. Those five family members (both faction leader and heir) and their heavy cavalry bodyguard were the main thing making this a tricky fight.

Spanish fled the field with few troops remaining, possibly lost the whole army due to losses.
That's their faction dead basically. In one turn I have forces from Africa arriving to take back the city I lost, while in a few turns time a couple of legions who were harrassing Germania will arrive on the north and east coasts of the Iberian Peninsula. From what I can see I just killed the majority of Spains forces, so now it's just a case of using their crappy roads to slowly get to their cities.

Incensed by the last battlemap I manouvered and positioned my troops such that the Dacians would be forced to attack me in a place where I would be on the high ground. My archers would use the range advantage to decimate their lines through sending volley after volley arcing through the clear, Dacian skies...

Oh you motherfucker Rome. Let's play spot the enemy horde (yes there is around 2000 of them, damn fog).
If you guessed here

Congratulations! You were right. Here they are in their full glory

It's okay - I don't know why they have onagers either. The fog soon lifted but the battle was never truly joined.

Minutes later the Dacians fled the field, after being raked by several arrow volleys. All I could do was kill the onagers and ballistae as they were left behind by the main force. Very poor form.
Two turns later they attacked again and were wiped out to a man, with minimal losses on my side. Dacia is effectively finished.

In the east, Pontus attacked one of my 3 legions with decent sized forces

Slightly cheesy though it may be, this deployment was forced upon me by how broken those chariots are.

Regardless, I would have used those rocks to protect my flank anyway. As you can see the battle was long and painful for both sides. My cavalry was decimated, as were some Thracian/Bastarnae mercenaries and a unit of Praetorian. But it was worse for them

Much worse. Still too many chariots lived for my liking. You just can't chase those things down - even when they're routing - without taken massive losses.

As a bonus: here's something I've never seen before

being offered money for nothing in return. I'd make an alliance with them but they're allied with Germania, who I'd either in a vague war with or allied to people who are at was with them. Still, better than them attacking. Scythia are a right bastard to fight.

Hard to tell so far. It's definitely nowhere near a departure as Conviction was from the other Splinter Cells. Some levels feel smaller, but it feels like there are plenty of options too, so I'm fairly content.

Pontus thought, "Hey, we outnumber them". Pontus thought, "Hey, we have dick chariots". Pontus thought, "It's only a bit of water". Pontus thought, "Our milkshakes do bring all the boys to the yard".
Kids, don't be Pontus.

The setup

The deployment

Majority of troops on the bridge with a few covering the ford. Message said the Pontic reinforcements were delayed. Would that be the deciding factor?

No they turned up about 10 seconds into the battle. And now there were a lot of them

But crossing a bridge makes numbers mean a lot less, especially when my archers are now pretty much incapable of missing flesh.

Also the AI seems to ignore the other crossing which, while fords are slower to cross than bridges, is a damn stupid idea nonetheless.
On the bridge it's hard to see what is attacking, what is routing, and what is dead